Nurturing Great Relationships

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SUMMARY

“If the conversation of personal development is always present in your relationship, your relationship is always getting better. If the conversation about personal development is never in your relationship, then your relationship will always be stagnant because you’re not growing together. ”

You have to get into people’s goals (and know their fears!) to understand their heart. Not only that, but you need to create unique experiences and share your personal growth journey with others.

“Once you know someone’s fears, you can over-communicate and cut off those fears in advance. Now, they feel supported and they’re not scared in the relationship.”

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This is a MUST WATCH episode about how to improve and nurture great relationships (with your family, friends, significant other, or even your colleagues). Remember: relationships bring life to LIFE, so do a better job at them.

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

[The following is the full transcript of this episode of The Brendon Show. Please note that this episode, like all TBS episodes, features Brendon speaking extemporaneously–he is unscripted and unedited. Filmed in one take, The Brendon Show has become one of the most viewed unscripted, direct-to-camera self-help series in the history of Youtube. It has also been the #1 Podcast in all of iTunes and is regularly in the top podcasts in Self-Help and Health categories around the globe. Subscribe to the free motivational podcast on iTunes or Stitcher.)

Everybody wants better relationships. When your relationship sucks, your life sucks. A ton of people have terrible relationships, and they don’t know why. They’re constantly fighting and they’re always in the argument mode. Sometimes they’re thinking the other person isn’t sufficient, or isn’t delivering for them, or isn’t happy for them, or isn’t supportive enough.

So, you have all these people who have good people in their lives, but their relationships suck (whether it’s relationships with family, friends or a significant other).

Here are four ideas that can actually help you improve your relationships, nurturing deeper, better relationships with anybody.

#1. Know their goals.

You never know a person if you don’t know their goals.

And if you don’t know their goals, you’re never going to be a great friend. You’ll never be their great lover, their great supporter, or their great family member. Most people actually don’t know other people’s goals. I’ll ask someone, ‘What’s your sister’s goals?’ And they will reply, ‘She wants to be a dancer.’… ‘Okay, what kind of dancer? When? What does she want to do with that career? Is it short term, or is it long term?’

You have to really get into people’s goals to understand their heart.

If you want to be a great spouse to somebody, you have to re-engage and say ‘Hey, what do you want at this stage of your life? Because I know what you used to want and then we had kids, but where are you at now?’

Have that conversation with your partner and say, ‘Let’s do some personal development. What do you really want to do right now at this stage of your life?’

When I say ‘this stage of your life’, that’s very specific. Meaning, a lot of people’s goals change. And those goals can change every three months, every year, every three years. So if you haven’t had the conversation with the important people in your life recently about what your goals are, and about what their goals are, then you’re just skimming at the surface.

If you don’t support other people’s dreams, how can you ever have a deep relationship with them?

And if you don’t share your dreams, your heart and your desire with other people, how can they possibly help you meet that hunger? How can they possibly help you become the best version of you if you haven’t shared it?

So, you also have to be very honest with them. What are your real thoughts? What are your real feelings? What are your real dreams? What do you really want at this stage of your life with all the important people around you? One of my favorite things to do with high performers is to say, ‘Do all the people around you know what you really want right now? Are they clear on what your goals are? Are they clear about how they can support that, or how much you want them to be involved in it?

A lot of people start their own business but they don’t tell the other people around them what that business is, what it requires, how they’d love their support. And so we all go it alone.

Isn’t going it alone the opposite of having healthy, supportive relationships?

So first thing you have to do if you want better relationships is to get to know other people’s goals.

#2: Know people’s fears and and share your fears.

You have to know people’s fears, because if you don’t know their fears, then you don’t really know them.

Isn’t it true we’re all running around sometimes, feeling inadequate or unworthy or undeserving? Isn’t it true we all have a bad day? Isn’t it true we all doubt on ourselves? Isn’t it true sometimes our fears prevent us from chasing our dreams? That’s part of life. And if you don’t know that part of the life of your partner or your friend or your spouse or your kids, do you really know them?

If you don’t know what people are scared of, you don’t know their outer limits. If you don’t know what people are scared of, or fear, you don’t know what their real comfort zone is. This means that, A. you can’t make sure that they have that comfort, that certainty, that stability with you. And B, you can’t help them grow. And if you’re in a relationship with somebody who can’t help you grow or you can’t help them grow, they get bored with you and they move on. A lot of relationships that could have been great end because the people didn’t realize what either the goals were or what their fears were. You might have somebody who is desperately afraid of losing you, but they’ve never shared it. So they’re running around with this insecurity in your relationship all the time and you’re never really aware of that. So for example, those nights out when you’re late, they’re having fears. Those nights out when you don’t respond to texts, they’re having fears. Those times that you don’t reply fast enough, they start wondering things and those fears grow into doubts about the relationship or doubt about your character. And all of a sudden, you’re fighting about stupid stuff. And if you knew that they were worried about those types of things, or fearful of those types of things, you could preempt those and say, “I know this has been an issue for you before. But here’s what’s happening…”

This means that once you know someone’s fears, you can over-communicate, and you can cut off those fears in advance. And now they feel supported, and now they’re not scared in your relationship. You have to know people’s goals and their fears.

#3. Create unique, varied experiences.
A lot of people in relationships go through the motions. For example, they go out to the movies with someone or out to dinner, and they’re distracted and on their phone the entire time. They’re not even paying attention to the other person, and they’re not trying to create magic.

But if you remember at the beginning of a relationship, you really worked hard to do unique things.

Maybe you took someone to a nice restaurant, to create an experience at the park or at a show. You worked hard to set up flowers for them or give them a nice card. You were thinking about experiences. You had all these ideas for adventures and unique experiences, and then it turned into Thursday night Netflix, four barrels of popcorn and a barrel of wine. All of a sudden, you’re wondering where the zest and pop went in that relationship.

You stopped creating experiences that brought out that newness, vibrancy, adventure and growth together.

The most important thing in great relationships is that they do things together.

And this applies to your friends, too. Are you creating situations with your friends where you go out on an adventure together? When’s the last time you really hung out with your friends and you did something new? When’s the last time in your relationship or your marriage or your partnership, did you really try to like craft something magical?

Often, people realize they didn’t try to craft something magical in years. And now they wonder why their marriage is in trouble, or why their partner is disinterested.

You have to work hard in relationships. You have to plan in relationships. You have to make sure that that variety is there and that experiences are forming a tighter bond.

You can share your goals, you can share your fears, you can talk all day, you can have great dates, but if you’re not having new experiences together, suddenly you get bored with each other and the magic is gone. So, what geek-out thing could you do together? What new thing can you see or experience together? What exciting thing can you participate in together? Is there a show coming up? I always love to tell people, you should know everything cool coming to your town this weekend. So if you want to ask your girlfriend or your friends or your partner, your spouse to attend that thing, you got it. Go do more stuff together. And the connection deepens.

#4. Share your personal growth journey with others.
Every week, what would it sound like and what would it be like if you said to someone, “Here’s something I learned about myself this week. Here are the things I’m working on. I’ve got this weakness over here I’m trying to strengthen up.”

Share your growth journey with other people instead of trying to be so perfect with other people.

You can say, “I’m really struggling in this area. But here’s what I’m trying to do better at it. Do you have any advice for me?”

Seek advice from other people about your personal growth. Share the books you’re reading, the courses you’re taking.

Share this video with them, share my podcast with them. Share whatever you’re consuming that’s making you better. Share that more and talk about it more.

Put the conversation of personal development into your relationships and then those relationships start to grow automatically because the discussion is there.

If the conversation of personal development is always present in your relationship, your relationship is always getting better.

If the conversation about personal development is never in your relationship, then your relationship will always be stagnant cause you’re not growing together. But if you’re growing together, you’ll be happier together. You’ll be together longer and you will feel more connected with the very important people in your life. Relationships bring life to LIFE. So do a better job at them.